Britain is becoming fearful of its young people with
most adults too scared to intervene if they see misbehaviour in the street,
a report says.

It claims there is a growing "paedophobia"
among adults and confusion as to who is to blame for the problems of wayward
youth.

The Institute of Public Policy Research, the think
tank which carried out the research, found that only 34 per cent of adults
would be willing to intervene if they saw a group of 14-year-old boys vandalising
a bus shelter. In contrast, 65 per cent of Germans, 52 per cent of Spaniards
and 50 per cent of Italians said they would intervene.

advertisementOf the Britons unwilling to step in, 39
per cent said they feared being physically attacked, 14 per cent were scared
of later reprisals and 12 per cent feared verbal abuse.

Britons were also more likely than other Europeans
to say that young people are responsible for antisocial behaviour. Seventy
nine per cent gave "lack of discipline" as the root cause, compared
with 69 per cent of Spaniards, 62 per cent of Italians and 58 per cent of
French people.

The report, Freedom's Orphans: Raising Youth in a Changing
World, to be published next month, said that both condemnation of teenagers
and attempts to absolve them from all blame were misplaced.

Nick Pearce, the IPPR's director, said: "The debate
about childhood in Britain is polarised between false opposites: that either
children or adults are to blame. It also ignores inequalities in the transition
to adulthood. Many children are safer, healthier and better educated than
in the past, whilst others suffer complex, traumatic routes through adolescence.

"A rise in social 'paedophobia' will simply make
matters worse. In the past, local parents tended to look out for children
in a community, deciding what behaviour was appropriate, how it should be
dealt with and supporting each other in doing so.

"In closer knit communities, adults supervised
their neighbours' children. These days, adults tend to turn a blind eye
or cross over on the other side of the road rather than intervene in the
discipline of another person's child, often because they fear they might
be attacked."

The report found that 1.5 million Britons thought about
moving home because of young people hanging around and 1.7 million avoided
going out after dark.

They were three times more likely to complain about
young people hanging around than noisy neighbours. The report claimed that
structured activities, such as sports, scouts or martial arts, were better
for young people than unstructured youth clubs.

It found that at the age of 30, people who had attended
structured activities at the age of 16 were slightly less likely than average
to be depressed, living in social housing, have no qualifications and to
be single, separated or divorced.

Those who had attended youth clubs were slightly more
likely than average to smoke, be single parents, commit crimes or have a
low income. The report recommends that every secondary school pupil should
be required to take part in two hours of structured extracurricular activities
a week.

It said there could be fines for parents who do not
insist their children take part, in the same way as parents are punished
for their children's truancy.

A separate report, by the children's charity Barnado's,
claims that young people have been "demonised" by politicians
and the media.

Pam Hibbert, the principal policy officer for the charity,
said that wearing hoodies and meeting friends on the street was all part
of growing up.

She said: "We have become fearful of all children.
We know for example young crime in itself has remained fairly static in
the last 10 years, it is a minority that cause problems and retaliate."

Barnado's said there was a lack of activities involving
young people and adults such as growing vegetables in allotments or adults
helping at young centres.